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NFS Multi-Connections in vSphere 8.0 Update 1

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The upcoming vSphere 8.0 Update 1 release includes a lot of exciting new features, some of which you can learn about by listening to either The Unexplored Territory and VirtuallySpeaking Podcasts, both of which covered the vSphere 8.0 Update 1 launch announcement. One of the highlighted core storage platform feature is the long awaited NFS capability that will allows users to select and isolate a specific VMKernel interface as shown in the screenshot below.


This actually reminded me of another interesting NFS capability that will also be part of the upcoming vSphere 8.0 Update 1 release, which is for ESXi to support multiple TCP connections for a single NFS v3 volume, also referred to as nconnect for those familiar with this NFS capability.

For those interested in this new NFS capability, it is important to note that this setting will initially only be configurable by using either the vSphere API or ESXCLI directly on an ESXi host.

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Quick Tip - How to download ESXi ISO image for all releases including patch updates?

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Not all ESXi releases, including patch updates are available as an ISO image that can be downloaded. Depending on the type of ESXi release, it will either be available as an ISO and Offline Bundle (zip) format which can downloaded from the ESXi Customer Connect portal or only as an Offline Bundle which must be downloaded from the VMware Patch portal.

I typically see folks forgetting about the VMware Patch portal, which also provides patch updates for the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), when they are searching for a new ESXi updates. Let's take a look at an example using the ESXi 7.0 Update 3 release, as you can see from the screenshot below, you can download 7.0 Update 3c, d, f and g from the Customer Connector portal but for 7.0 Update 3e, i, j and k you will need to use the VMware Patch portal.


As mentioned earlier, when downloading ESXi patches from the VMware Patch portal, they are only available in the Offline Bundle format, which might work for most typical patch use cases but in some scenarios, you may actually want it in an ISO format, especially for initial installation.

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Is my vSphere Cluster managed by vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) as a Desired Image or Baseline?

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Prior to vSphere 7.0, ESXi lifecycle management has been provided by vSphere Update Manager (VUM), which has been around for more than a decade plus and is most likely what you are still using today. With the release of vSphere 7.0, VMware introduced a brand new lifecycle management solution for ESXi called vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM), which you can read more about HERE.


While VMware has made it clear that vLCM will be the future going forward for ESXi lifecycle management, we also understand that most customers will still be using the existing VUM-based solution and we wanted to make sure it was easy to  transition between the two solutions, especially within the vSphere UI.

An interesting question was recently brought up was how to determine whether a vSphere Cluster was using the new vLCM solution based on desired images versus VUM, which uses baselines?

Note: If you are not familiar between vLCM Desired Image and VUM Baselines, be sure to check out this helpful resource HERE.

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